Stephen Harper has granted an interview to Ben Shapiro, a far-right personality and ex-Breitbart writer whose content was avidly consumed by Alexandre Bissonnette, the Quebec City mosque shooter who murdered 6 worshippers and injured nineteen others.

Shapiro is a well known far-right online personality and also hosts his own show on Fox News. Shapiro often helps spread conspiracy theories about Muslims and other vulnerable groups.

Court evidence showed that in the lead-up to the attack, Bissonnette was an avid consumer of Shapiro’s content on Twitter having viewed his account 93 times. Many of the media figures Bissonnette followed were also connected to Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media.

Evidence presented at Alexandre Bissonnette's sentencing hearing this morning includes a list of some of the Twitter accounts he was checking in the month before he killed six men at a Quebec City mosque. pic.twitter.com/Xdew4HbjkQ

The connections are compelling. A video by Vic Berger shows how Shapiro obsessively focused on disparaging Muslims, creating a sense of fear and anger with his audience. The video includes Bissonnette’s interview with police where he uses similar arguments as Shapiro to justify his attack.

He recently defended Donald Trump’s nationalism, which critics argue has led to an increase in hate crimes and white nationalism.

While most Canadian politicians presented a united front during NAFTA negotiations, Harper publicly criticized Canada in a memo to his clients. Harper also met secretly with Trump officials during those same negotiations.

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